Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on January 30, 2015, 14:35

Quote from: MatHayward on January 30, 2015, 13:09

A 50mp sensor seems like overkill to me.

Everybody has different needs. For me, more megapixels means I make more money. If you shoot micro, sports, weddings, or whatever, you probably don't need 50MP.

But I don't want a 50MP DSLR. I'm waiting on Sony's 50MP A-series.

What subject area do you need it for, Paulie?

Landscape/Cityscape

If you shoot micro you may not need anything more than a camera phone these days.

I can recommend Graph Paper Press WP themes combined with their Sell Media plug-in at https://graphpaperpress.com/.

I used it to build my site and it is possible to sell direct footage files up to 4K (over 1GB file-size) and make them instantly downloadable. Have a look at http://www.londontimelapse.co.uk.

How's Google like your site? I have a GPP/SM site too and only about 10% of the images have been indexed so I have almost no traffic. I've tried changing plugins for sitemap, SEO, and no improvement.

I also have a Photodeck and Photoshelter site which both are indexed decently and get good traffic so I'm thinking Google may not like the Sell Media catalog.

Quote from: Pixart on January 22, 2015, 10:51

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on January 22, 2015, 08:06

So let's say that Google decides offering an opt-out doesn't make sense for their deal with DT and removes the option to opt-out. What then?

Either Google walks away or they negotiate a fair rate for the artists.

Don't forget - if everyone opts out DT will have no content to sell via their OTHER partners, so they lose more than the Google revenue.

This seems both pointless speculation and rather confused. Google can't remove the opt-out, only DT can do that. And if they do, it means you are either fully in or you have to leave the agency - iStock did something similar and even the most ferocious critics of Thinkstock quietly knuckled under and accepted their files being sent there.

I wouldn't call it pointless speculation. More like preemptive planning.

Google is a giant used to getting their way. DT is a small fish. This joint deal clearly is lining someone's pockets at both Google and DT regardless of how negatively it affects contributors. So if Google doesn't like all of the opt-outs what do you think is going to happen? Right. They'll tell DT either to disable the opt-out or the money faucet gets turned off for DT.

I wonder where the bottom is. The more announcements I see like this the more I think we're not even close.

Hey everyone! I researched little bit. But ım gonna ask even so. How can ı be contributor in Gettyimages?

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(This is a repost of what I wrote in the other 2015 predictions thread which looks like it's dying, so I'll add it here:)


My prediction: the Wall will come down on more people than ever in 2015, making them so depressed about microstock that they will give up.  This will include many hobbyists who earn just a few thousand a year, as well as some of the big contributors who earn (or once earned) six figures.

People will do the math and realize that they can no longer increase their own ports as quickly (by percentage) as the agencies can, making microstock a losing game once your port hits a certain size.  There's just no way around this math.  In my first few years, I was certain I could beat the Wall.  I was going to work harder, achieve better quality, find better niches than anyone else.  Oh, how deluded I was.

I'm predicting my own income will fall 20% or so, and my resolution is to find another income stream.  For me, 2014 was the big wake-up call that microstock is not the reliable source of secondary income I hoped might carry me into retirement.  That dream is long gone.  2015 will be the year I resolve to find another income source to get passionate about and reduce the time I waste on this unsustainable numbers game.

Good post.

And at one time I was hoping this would be my retirement. Ain't happenin'. This whole thing started off with so much promise.

I hit the wall too. Seems like most people need to increase their portfolios by 50-100% every year to see some growth or at least get the same revenue as the previous year. This is why it looks so promising to newbies. Because it's not hard to go from 100 images to 200 images in a year and have all kindsa BDEs, BMEs, and BYEs. But its not so easy after you're in it for a few years and need to increase your portfolio from 3,000 to 6,000 images in a year.

I've been working on other income sources for the past couple of years. Experiment. There's life beyond stock.

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on January 10, 2015, 10:33

He's a billionaire because he masterfully played the game of business and managed to make a fortune off of ordinary people. Bravo! Well played.

I can't quite manage a "bravo" for this guy, who's made a ton of money as a middleman by gaining control of a market and exploiting photographers around the world, grinding their margins to dust and causing many skilled and creative people to abandon the business.  Yes there is some skill in evidence here, but also a very large component of being in the right place at the right time.

We don't have a 'buyer's market', or a 'seller's market'.  What we have today is a 'middleman's market'.    Somehow, I don't feel this represents the original dream of the internet and crowdsourcing increasing opportunities for everyone. 


I look forward to a day when the photographic community finds ways to route around Shutterstock entirely.  That will get a 'bravo' from me.

Business is a game. He's played it well. Not saying I'm a fan of his but he's a billionaire. I'm not. Good for him. He's doing something right. Nobody's forcing people to contribute so it seems an awful lot of people must be okay with being exploited.

As far as right time, if that's true why has SS seen such huge success while the dozens of other sites never grew or died? That's a little more than timing and luck.

And I totally agree with you about the middleman part. I'm tired of the way things are which is why I've been focusing on selling direct and through other channels.

Performance rewards, and seniority; they are pretty standard in the corporate world.  I don't see why they shouldn't happen for us, as we are still providing content for the corporation.  Even better quality images than when we first started.  You pay your dues, do your due diligence and should get rewarded; not screwed.  That's usually how it goes, but unfortunately life isn't always that fair.  I'm not saying we are being screwed, but it's not easy competing with all the content from other photographers and illustrators that is steadily flowing in.  That's why I think those who have been backing the company the longest should get "a little something sweeter" for their loyalty and hard work.  It's the least we could get... it's not like we don't have to pay for our own overpriced healthcare plans now, as independent contractors (or face a 2% yearly penalty on our income, by the govt.)

I would definitely be a lot more motivated to create more images, if there was a raise.  When you sell thousands of licenses per month, those 3 to 5 cents extra per subscription sale really do help.

In the corporate world there are a limited amount of highly skilled people to fill a limited amount of positions. Incentives are used to try to keep good talent and improve finances.

Shutterstock probably doesn't have a limited supply of skilled contributors. And they seem to be happy with their finances. They already have a bazillion images with millions more added monthly. If they offered an incentive to contributors to produce more images would those more images make them more money? I'd say probably not and the fact they haven't done anything to offer more benefits to contributors would support that. Most of their massive $30 million plus annual marketing spend goes toward attracting buyers.

If you owned SS what would be your financial goal? Maybe to increase buyer spending while minimizing downloads that need to be paid to contributors? Maybe the goal is to have good enough content to continue attracting buyers but not so good of content that downloads increase? The only reason they would offer incentives to contributors is because of a financial problem. If sales are down, and the sales team is telling management that they're losing sales because corporate buyers are saying content sucks, you can bet suddenly they will start coming up with "contributor needs guides". If that doesn't work then they may offer financial incentives. But that's only to correct a financial problem.

Also be careful of what you ask for. IS implemented a performance based model to reward higher performers who produced high quantities of saleable work and "motivate" the people who weren't producing saleable content. Redeemed Credits anyone? We see how well that worked. Especially when your performance is tied to how well the company's sales are doing.

So SS doesn't seem to have any financial problems at the moment and they have no reason to offer a performance incentive. In fact it may not be a good sign if they start offering incentives because it could mean they're having sales problems.

I'm changing my hope.

I hope to grow my direct sales so well that I no longer need to post in hope threads.

And this reflects the situation BEFORE the "relaunch", since when sales have tanked without any sign of sales transferring to PP - at least, not in my results.

Looking at my sales downloads of subscriptions are sharply increasing while regular sales are decreasing. I earn less per subscription download and am now earning 1/3-1/2 of what I used to after 9/14 for regular downloads. So subscription sales may actually be up for them. But that doesn't do me any good.

Thanks for posting. Stuff like this always valuable to me.

Do you see any of the stock sites as being in decline? Like maybe content is getting outdated, technology problems, etc. Or maybe you're just getting unhappy with them?

I haven�t had a download yet this year, so the indies are not being favored.

I've had two downloads so far this year.

Trust is more important than money. If the customers feel the brand can�t be trusted, they will go elsewhere. Same for contributors.

Sometimes but I'd disagree. People will put up with a lot of mistrust if the money is right. If a contributor is making $5,000 per month and getting treated like dirt very few people would walk away. And that's what IS used to their advantage and leveraged benefits away from contributors. They knew they could make whatever changes they wanted and their top producers and their great images were locked in. Same for buyers. If they're getting excellent content for good prices they will put up with a lot of mistrust and poor treatment. But when earnings collapse and/or prices massively increase there's no longer a reason to put up with the poor treatment.

Not dead yet but they seem to be quickly headed in that direction. This latest bandaid they applied to the severed artery may have slowed the external bleeding but the internal bleeding felt by contributors seems to be severe.

And this will only get worse as contributors stop uploading or remove images because their sales have collapsed. IS will be left with an ever increasing amount of generic, outdated, and irrelevant images which buyers won't want to pay for. They will then need to decrease prices further. Contributors will make even less and continue to leave. This will continue until there aren't enough buyers buying or contributors contributing to turn a profit and that will be the end.

A few years ago when they started squeezing contributors I said eventually enough contributors would leave that it would hurt them financially and they would need to reverse the process and start giving benefits back. They already started to do that this year. The problem now is that prices have massively dropped over the past couple years and they may be in a bad situation where they can't afford to give contributors back anything and are watching their revenue freefall. It may be a downward spiral from which there is no way to recover.